Last updated on September 30, 2018
Last year I published a post titled “Econ PhDs and the Agricultural and Applied Economics Job Market,” which was pretty popular.
Given that, and after serving as placement director for our department for a few years now, I thought I should write a post that discusses what ag and applied econ PhD students should know when they decide to go on the broader economics job market. Here goes, in no particular order:
- There are no “splits” in economics departments. I made the mistake of asking the first Canadian economics department I interviewed with at CEEE in 2005 what the split was for the position I was interviewing was. I only made that mistake once after witnessing the interviewer’s puzzled reaction. There is no such thing as a split outside of ag and applied econ!
- The teaching load at most econ departments tends to be higher than in ag and applied econ departments. The typical teaching load at a research university in an economics department is something like 2-2, meaning two classes per semester. At liberal arts colleges or at regional campuses of state universities it tends to be more than that.
- Quantity of published articles tends to matter less in economics departments than in ag and applied economics departments.
- Similarly, anything that is not published in an econ journal will be dismissed, often severely, in an econ department. This means that articles in Science, Nature, PNAS, PLoS One, and other interdisciplinary journals will count for little or not at all come tenure and promotion time in an economics department. In the limit, some of your colleagues in an economics department might count such publications as net negatives, given that the opportunity cost of working on a paper published in a non-econ journal is a paper published in an econ journal.
- Grants matter less in economics department than in ag and applied economics departments. Specifically, while grants are sometimes seen as an output in ag and applied econ departments, econ departments tend to see them purely as inputs in the publication process. In the limit, some of your colleagues will equate getting grants with prostitution.* More importantly, you are much less likely to have to show evidence of grantsmanship for promotion and tenure in an economics department than in an ag and applied economics department.
- Before interviewing with an economics department, you will need to work on polishing your spiel in order to make it appealing to people whose work is far, far-removed from your own. This means that you should have a really good angle to convince macroeconomists and financial economists that what you do is relevant to economics. For some people, no amount of policy-relevance will make your work interesting. So try to think about what your work helps the world learn about some aspect of economics.
- Read outside of your immediate topic area. For instance, since I was writing my dissertation on agrarian contracts (specifically, sharecropping and contract farming), I read widely in the area of applied contract theory, reading articles from labor, finance, health, IO, etc. that were about the empirics of contracts.
- Think about how your work might apply or relate to other fields. For instance, the reverse share tenancy situations I was studying in my job-market paper were akin to certain principal-agent relationships in finance (finance), and the contract farming agreements I was studying tied in directly with value chains (IO, business).
Here are some thoughts from a friend who is an assistant professor at a policy school:
I think one thing that I found useful going on the economics market was to remember to position myself in a discipline of economics–this is easier for environmental and development economists relative to pure ag economists … The second would be to remember an aspect of theory that one’s work is appealing to. I think the capacity for reduced form “I found an effect” is waning and making sure our students think through some central theory they appeal to could be useful. Third, I think being able to articulate undergraduate courses and graduate non-ag courses they could teach would also be in their interest. Finally, and this may be specific to places where mentorship is really valued, it would be useful to think through whom you would collaborate with in the prospective department and whose advice and mentorship one would seek.
Finally, here are thoughts from another friend of mine, who currently chairs a top-50-ish economics department:
-In a few fields, especially environmental and development, econ departments do look closely at those with ag and applied econ degrees.-In AEA interviews, I have usually found ag and applied econ candidates to be less polished.-Coauthorship is more common in ag and applied economics, and so candidates need to be clear about what their contribution is.-One advantage of ag and applied econ is with respect to applied training, experience getting grants, and the ability to work with non-economists. Not all econ departments value this, but the fraction that do is increasing over time.-If candidates have publications, they are likely to be in ag journals or field journals, or sometimes non-econ journals. An important strategy prior to entering the job market is to go for more general interest, or at least try to write papers for a broader audience.-Then there are questions about training. As you know, in ag and applied econ programs, over time the trend has been to take fewer core theory and metrics classes from the econ department. Same goes for qualifiers. Candidates need to know this, so they can (hopefully) relay how the differential training may be a positive rather than a signal of lower quality.-On the other hand, if someone is forward-looking perhaps it is not a bad strategy to take the core econ classes and exams, and then take advantage of what an applied program has to offer. One usually gets less teaching experience in ag and applied econ, so it could be a strong signal to seek out one or two teaching opportunities, even at a nearby university.
* This is something I have actually heard a senior colleague say when I worked at a policy school.